A way to see non-race personal bests? (Read 454 times)

ninian

posted: 12/9/2012 at 9:05 PM

I run, however I have never entered a race. Sites such as Endomondo and even Garmin Connect now allow you to see personal bests for training. Is there anyway (perhaps I am missing something) to see these within this site? I know there is a spot for them but it its only for races. Is there a way for me to easily mark all my workouts as a race if thats what is required?

If you set the Type: field in a workout to "Race", then the RA log will track your PB for that specific distance.

I have a lot of workouts I would have to go and do this for. I suppose what I am requesting is a Personal Bests that you can maybe view by Training or Race. For example a list of training personal bests and racing personal bests, or a setting, something along those lines.

Well if you REALLY wanted to change them all there is a way to export, edit, delete and re-import.

You can run reports on any specific distance if you want. Its pretty easy. You can even save the reports for later use. Reports, New Search, pretty self explanatory from there I would think. Once you see the report you can save as.

I have become Death, the destroyer of electronic gadgets

"When I got too tired to run anymore I just pretended I wasnt tired and kept running anyway" - dd, age 7

Although if you want to do it more elegantly I would personally pick the distances you want to track PR's on. Run the report. Change the current winner to "Race" and then from here on out you can just either call everything racing or just the workouts that you are striving for a new best.

I have become Death, the destroyer of electronic gadgets

"When I got too tired to run anymore I just pretended I wasnt tired and kept running anyway" - dd, age 7

Well if you REALLY wanted to change them all there is a way to export, edit, delete and re-import.

You can run reports on any specific distance if you want. Its pretty easy. You can even save the reports for later use. Reports, New Search, pretty self explanatory from there I would think. Once you see the report you can save as.

Why 're-import' into RA? Export your data, import into Excel and then you can do ANYTHING you want. You can save the file and just re-import the data whenever you want an updated analysis if you setup your spreadsheet correctly. A little work, and maybe some learnin' on your part, but it's very powerful once you get the hang of it. I'm beginning to think of RA as a repository for my data (the database) and limited reporting which is good for 95% of what I need/want but for the other 5% I 'roll my own' using Excel.

ninian

posted: 12/10/2012 at 4:07 PM

Thanks for all the replies. I know I can get the data one way or another via this site but I still think it would be nice to have something like a Personal Best page where you can switch from training mode and racing mode. I know for the racers this makes no sense as you dont care about personal bests in training.

A site like Endomondo will track your fastest mile, 5km, 10km, etc... So if I happen to run my fasted 5km from kilometer 6 to 10 in a 10km run it will pick up on this and record it as a best. I will play around a bit more, thanks for your help.

That would only work if I run the exact distance though. However, if I am running 8KM and happen to run my fastest 5KM within that 8KM there is not really a way to identify it. Its just a cool feature I like about the other site I mentioned as I upload data and then I discover a new personal/training "best".

That would only work if I run the exact distance though. However, if I am running 8KM and happen to run my fastest 5KM within that 8KM there is not really a way to identify it. Its just a cool feature I like about the other site I mentioned as I upload data and then I discover a new personal/training "best".

I know that I'm a little bit of a contrarian, but would not want this feature. I don't want to be encouraged to race my training runs.

Doing a time trial in training is different than that, but I wouldn't want to do it for any given run.

"When a person trains once, nothing happens. When a person forces himself to do a thing a hundred or a thousand times, then he certainly has developed in more ways than physical. Is it raining? That doesn't matter. Am I tired? That doesn't matter, either. Then willpower will be no problem." Emil Zatopek

Wouldn't this also make all of your "PR" for a certain distance come from a slightly longer run? Basically this function gives you a flying start for each distance.

Although, I guess if you're not interested in racing and are running for fitness then how you come off the line and get up to speed is irreverent and steady-state running becomes the more important factor.

I probably wouldn't use it, but it is an interesting idea for a new function.

ninian

posted: 12/11/2012 at 10:55 AM

Yea, maybe its just me being used a different site and wanting to migrate everything here. I understand the more seasoned runners probably would not have a need for it. I can live with it either way, I will just have to make sure I do the occasional time trial and mark it as a race from time to time.